


A Lower Deep

by the_dishwasher



Series: What reinforcement we may gain from hope [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV), 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Genre: Burial Mounds, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, also what was WWX eating all that time, attempt at comedy, but no prior Lucifer knowledge required, but the pining is inescapable, did the devil have a hand in making the amulet, not Yanli’s soup that’s for sure, vaguely a Lucifer crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24083674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_dishwasher/pseuds/the_dishwasher
Summary: Wei Wuxian has just fallen into the Burial Mounds and has no intention of sticking around. He finds out that getting out is harder than he had anticipated, and that there's nothing decent (or spicy) to eat. While looking through the records on demonic cultivation in the hope of finding something useful, Wei Wuxian accidentally summons a visitor…
Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Series: What reinforcement we may gain from hope [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1737538
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	A Lower Deep

**Author's Note:**

> For a little while now, I’ve been thinking about some of the thematic links between _Lucifer_ and _The Untamed_ , particularly of the parallels between Lucifer and Wei Wuxian (falling, brotherly betrayal, free will, drinking a lot, being naughty… I could go on). I also belatedly found out that ‘Stygian’ (of the Stygian Tiger Amulet) is of the river Styx (i.e. one of the rivers in Hell), which further prompted me to explore this connection.
> 
> The other thing I’ve been thinking about is: what did Wei Wuxian eat in the Burial Mounds? I was going for ‘comically gross’ here, but maybe it ended up being just ‘gross’ (warning - it’s bits of corpses, but described in a lol way?).

* * *

A thud reverberated through the trees, and for a moment the voices haunting the Burial Mounds fell quiet. Tentatively, the ghosts moved towards the source of the sound. They looked at each other and at the newly-formed crater. In the middle of the crater lay a man. Beside him, a black sword hovered.

The man slowly opened his eyes, looked up at the sky and saw nothing but swirls of cloud, black and purple.

The man groaned.

‘Oh, it’s just Wei Wuxian,’ the ghosts said to one another.

Slowly, Wei Wuxian pushed himself up. He saw the sword and crawled towards it. The ghosts inched closer to get a better look at him. Wei Wuxian grabbed the sword and stuck it into the ground. The sword greedily absorbed the Burial Mounds’ resentful energy. It unleashed its many vengeful voices, inciting dark deeds. The ghosts decided to howl along with it.

‘Where’s a Lan silence spell when you need one,’ murmured Wei Wuxian, wondering how to shut them up.

By the second day, Wei Wuxian had exhausted all the talismans and magic within his reach, but still the screams continued. The ghosts laughed off his efforts and threw maggots at him.

By what may have been the fifth day, Wei Wuxian was getting pretty fed up of it all.

‘Take revenge, Wei Wuxian,’ howled the ghosts, ‘Join us…’

Wei Wuxian whistled the first thing that came into his head to block out their wailing.

Part-way through the tune he realised that the voices were growing quieter. Were some of the ghosts even singing along? He could have sworn he heard a ghost say, ‘That’s pretty nice, actually.’

Sometime later, while reclining in the Demon Subdue Palace, a cave upon which he had stumbled quite by accident, Wei Wuxian was inspired to try out a different song. He had been reading through the fragmented research on demonic cultivation that had been strewn all over the place, and wanted to put some of the theory into practice. The new song rapidly backfired – the ghosts became more agitated and released a great deal of resentful energy targeting Wei Wuxian. He wasn’t sure how much of it he’d absorbed since he had fallen into the Mounds.

‘Piss off,’ Wei Wuxian told the ghosts, and rubbed at his growling stomach, ‘Can’t you make yourselves useful, find me something to eat?’

‘Bones upon bonessss, upon the rotten flesssh of your enemiesss,’ hissed the resident ghosts. That did not sound appetising in the least.

By what may have been the thirteenth day, it wasn’t sounding so bad after all. Owing to the research notes, Wei Wuxian had managed to compose a ‘make me some food’ song, which included a ‘make it spicy’ chorus. The song had resulted in only a moderate degree of success. Hard though they tried, the ghosts could not get the corpse slosh to Wei Wuxian’s desired levels of spicy. The spice was necessary to help better disguise the distinct taste of decaying corpses and because Wei Wuxian had a craving for chilli.

In order to fine-tune his control over the ghosts, and, more importantly, over the spiciness of the slosh, Wei Wuxian decided to make a flute. He started to bore a set of holes into a straight, hollow bone he had plucked off a leg sticking out of the ground. Perhaps a month had passed since he had landed in the Burial Mounds. Wei Wuxian’s insides stuck to themselves, resembling a deflated balloon. He’d happily give his right arm for a spoonful of his sister’s soup.

‘I hope you’re ok, Jiang Cheng,’ Wei Wuxian said in the direction of the sky, eyes half closed, ‘I hope you’re using my excellent golden core to the best of its ability, and that you’re taking care of our older sister. I truly hope that you’re not dead because then this would have been a colossal waste of time, ahaha.’

He lifted the carved bone to his dry lips and tried out another song, barely audible above the wind and the ghosts’ incessant crying. At first, he thought it had worked, because the crying stopped.

‘Hello, Young Master Cultivator,’ a man’s voice said.

Wei Wuxian looked over to his left.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked.

‘The devil, the devil,’ the ghost voices whispered.

‘That’s right,’ the man said and smiled. ‘Well go on then, why’d you summon me? Got a light? Or at least a drink?’

Wei Wuxian looked at his visitor, at his flute, and at the ghosts, who were shivering with fear. The man watched them all, fingers tapping on his knee.

‘Er,’ Wei Wuxian said, but called up a fire talisman anyway. It lit the man’s pipe.

‘Lovely stuff,’ the devil man said, taking a puff. ‘D’you mind if we have a chat before getting down to business? It’s been ages since I was last up here. What’s the goss? Have you got any porn?’

‘The goss? Porn!?’ Wei Wuxian rose to his feet and leaned on a blood-covered tree to avoid fainting. ‘I didn’t summon you, I was only trying to make the slosh spicier. I’ve been thrown down here by the Wen assholes and I need to find a way out. Unless you can help me, I suggest you piss off.’

‘There’s no need for this kind of language,’ the devil man said. ‘How long did you say you’ve been stuck down here again?’

Because it was perpetually dark in the Burial Mounds, Wei Wuxian could not be sure. He thought back to the time that he and Lan Wangji had been trapped in a cave, when the only thing that had helped him count the days was Lan Zhan’s boring but reliable sleeping pattern. He wished he’d kept better track of time in the Burial Mounds. The devil took another drag on his pipe.

‘Fine, business it is then. Tell me, is getting out of here really what you truly desire?’

Of course, it was. Wei Wuxian wanted to see his brother and sister again. His sister would feed him so much soup. He wanted to see Lan Zhan again too. He’d brag about his stay at the Mounds, and Lan Zhan would probably say something quintessentially Lan Zhan along the lines of ‘Wei Ying’ and ‘extremely boring’.

The devil man was unimpressed. He rubbed his forehead with his fingers, yawned, and looked into Wei Wuxian’s eyes.

‘Is that all? Nothing more? Nothing about revenge?’

The ghosts and the sword were emboldened by the devil’s choice of words. They tentatively called out, ‘Yes-yes, revenge, vengeance, make them pay, Wei Wuxian, kill them all!’

Flummoxed, Wei Wuxian shook his head. Into his mind came the image of Lan Wangji, floating gracefully all in white and strumming the guqin. The Second Young Master of the Gusu Lan Sect would say something along the lines of ‘Wei Ying’ and ‘how ridiculous’. Wei Wuxian thought of a promise he’d made under a sky of lanterns. But the devil put his hands on Wei Wuxian’s shoulders and looked deeper into his eyes, and other visions came to mind, of Lotus Pier ransacked, of the Master and Madam cut up and dead as their murderers laughed and drank, of the desperate fall into the Burial Mounds that felt like falling outside of the world. Wei Wuxian’s hands curled into fists. He could neither recognise nor argue with the words he said next.

‘I want to… I want to punish those responsible.’

‘How fascinating,’ the devil said. ‘A man after my own heart, if I had one. How d’you plan to do that then, pray tell?’

‘I will haunt them day and night, and I will command their fears to devour them from their insides out, until nothing remains but their snivelling husks. They will rue the day they ever crossed Wei Wuxian.’

‘Music to my ears,’ the devil coaxed, ‘Lovely.’

Wei Wuxian gripped his flute. He needed to get out of the Burial Mounds. The devil looked at the black sword planted in the soil. Wei Wuxian followed his gaze.

‘Speak,’ the devil ordered the sword.

‘Have a little use of me, Wei Wuxian,’ said the sword, its many voices speaking as one, ‘Find out what I’m really made of.’

Wei Wuxian shrugged. ‘I know what it’s made of. I just can’t melt it down. I can’t make my fires hot enough.’

The devil’s red and bright eyes shone, and he smiled with many teeth.

‘I think I can help with that,’ he said. ‘You’ll owe me a favour, of course.’

He stomped his foot and the earth split open. Wei Wuxian scrambled back from the crack. The devil beckoned the sword to come forward.

‘What will I owe you?’ Wei Wuxian asked.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ the devil said. ‘I’ll call it in one day.’ He beckoned the sword again.

‘Ah, we actually quite like being a sword, thank you,’ the voices of the sword protested, but could not help but be drawn nearer and nearer the hellfires.

‘Do get a move on,’ the devil growled. The sword screamed and fell into the pit.

‘Now, you,’ the devil said. Wei Wuxian took a deep breath and plunged his hands into the flame. His eyes teared up at the pain. His hands burned white. He thought of the cool waters of the Cloud Recesses and of Lan Zhan’s stoic face. Then he thought of what he would do to the Wens as soon as he had escaped the Burial Mounds. He’d stalk them, he’d find their most terrifying nightmares to unleash upon them, he’d break them apart so that they would end their miserable lives weeping for mercy. The thought made him laugh and sustained him just long enough to keep his hands submerged in the fire. With a clink, a piece of smouldering metal fell from the fires onto the rocky ground.

The devil clapped his hands, and the rock gave way to a mercurial fount that doused the metal. The metal hissed angrily and sputtered.

‘Well well,’ the devil said, draining the waters and kicking soil over the hellpit to put out the fires, ‘What do we have here?’

Wei Wuxian’s hands were unscathed. He picked up the metal, still warm to the touch, and it floated above his palm. Two tigers were joined together, vibrating with demonic energy.

‘A seal of the Yin iron, forged in the fires and rivers of Hell,’ Wei Wuxian said, admiring his work. ‘The Stygian Tiger Amulet.’

‘You’re welcome,’ the devil said. ‘Give it a go, play something.’

Wei Wuxian reached for his flute, and soon the ghosts, overseen by the amulet, made the most delicious corpse slosh yet, with a nearly perfect spiciness. They even added some blood-curdled leaves and grass husks for that extra crunch. Wei Wuxian thought this a great success and tried to avoid thinking about precisely how the slosh was made. The ghosts even managed to knock up some liquor, which Wei Wuxian sniffed with caution.

‘Play something else, will you?’ the devil man said, taking a hearty swig of the mysterious liquor. ‘I’ll have to leave soon and there’s no music down there. Nothing good, anyway.’

Without thinking, Wei Wuxian’s fingers moved over the flute. It was a song that sat so comfortably within him that he often hummed it to himself. Come to think of it, it was the song he’d first whistled to subdue the ghosts. He wasn’t sure where he knew it from.

‘Hm,’ the devil said as the song ended.

‘Do you know it?’ Wei Wuxian asked, hopeful that there might be an answer. He poured some ghost liquor into half a skull and raised it to the devil.

‘Not exactly,’ the devil said. He took another drink. ‘I know of it. Humans do go on about it so.’

‘Ah really? Then how come I’ve never come across it?’

The devil man smiled. He re-filled his pipe. ‘Young Master Cultivator, if someone has played this song for you, then, clearly, you have come across it at least once before.’

‘Huh,’ said Wei Wuxian, spinning his flute between his fingers.

The devil wasn’t looking at Wei Wuxian anymore, but at the grey and purple sky, and his expression was frightening and sad.

‘I guess I owe you a favour, then,’ Wei Wuxian said. ‘But you still haven’t told me how to get out of here. I need to see my brother and sister.’

The devil turned to face him. ‘You might think of what you’ll tell them, Young Master Cultivator, when they ask you about the ghosts and corpses suddenly under your control.’

Wei Wuxian swallowed. The Stygian Tiger Amulet spun by his side, and he could sense the ghosts let themselves fall under its spin, hypnotised. They came to it, and to Wei Wuxian, like moths to a flame. Surely his brother and sister would understand – desperate times and all that. He thought of his embarrassment at the Gusu Lan lectures when his ideas about demonic cultivation had gotten him kicked out. He thought of how Lan Zhan’s face looked when Wei Wuxian had raised the slightest hypothetical possibility of tapping into resentful energy.

‘They’ll be disappointed in you, naturally,’ the devil said. ‘In the end, they’ll stand against you and they’ll stab you in your side as you fight for what you consider justice. Brothers are especially known for that kind of thing.’ He tapped on the base of his pipe to dislodge the remnant ash and looked into the distance.

‘Your amulet will help you leave this place,’ the devil said at last, ‘but you’ll find that you’ll never really leave it, no matter how far away you get.’ He stood up and spread his great wings.

And then, it was just Wei Wuxian and the wind in the Burial Mounds, with only the twirling amulet and the spicy corpse slosh to show for the devil having ever been there at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! There’s a Part 2 coming featuring Lucifer and Lan Wangji. I also hope that someone else might pick up on the potential of this crossover, I’d love to read what you come up with.
> 
> The title and series title are taken from Paradise Lost, ~~which I read after watching _Lucifer_~~.
> 
> From my Wikipedia research, tobacco doesn't appear to have reached China until the second half of the 16th Century, but I don't doubt that Lucifer has been into it ever since it existed (5000BC in the Americas, if not earlier). Wei Wuxian probably has more important things to worry about than ask his random visitor why he's setting a wooden tube on fire, anyway.


End file.
